Lawmaker Indictment Could Hurt State : a hero demorat
By ALLEN M. JOHNSON Jr. and CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: June 5, 2007
NEW ORLEANS, June 4 — Even after the F.B.I. raided Representative William J. Jefferson’s office and recovered $90,000 in marked bills from a freezer in his home, the congressman’s voters stayed loyal. His largely black constituency elected him for a ninth term in November, and many voters said he had been unfairly singled out.
But after Mr. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, was indicted on Monday on 16 counts related to soliciting bribes from businessmen, including black entrepreneurs, a number of his constituents said it was time for him to go.
“I don’t think he should fight it,” said Sharon A. Handy, 40, a security guard, who, like many here, was worried that the charges could hurt local efforts to obtain more aid to recover from Hurricane Katrina. “It won’t help the state at all,” Ms. Handy said, standing in the rain outside a post office in the Central City area.
Keyana C. Wilson, 35, who is studying business at a community college, added: “That’s a lot of charges. Maybe he should resign.”
The concerns about Mr. Jefferson, 60, who had risen from poverty to become one of the most prominent black members of Congress, reflected not just the sobering nature of his potential fall from grace, but a sense that he had let down the city in its time of crisis. There also seemed to be a new appreciation of the cost of corruption accusations.
“It hurts to lose that kind of experience, if that’s what it means,” said Oliver M. Thomas Jr., the City Council president. “It’s another shot to a recovering community.”
Mr. Jefferson’s lawyer, Robert Trout, said Monday that the congressman was innocent and would fight the charges.
Some residents here, like Geraldine Myers, 65, said they would still give Mr. Jefferson the benefit of the doubt, because, as she said, he has put up “a pretty good fight for those things we need in the community.”
But while Mr. Jefferson has long been admired for his storybook rise from a boyhood on a cotton farm to the Harvard Law School and, until recently, a seat on the prestigious Ways and Means Committee, he also has become the butt of jokes about his “cold cash” and “frozen assets.”
Political analysts and his rivals said that a long fight to clear his name could distract him and leave a cloud hanging over the state’s efforts for increased federal assistance.
“Here we are trying to get all of this money out of Congress, and here we have a longtime incumbent indicted on public corruption charges,” said Edward F. Renwick, a political scientist at Loyola University here. “It doesn’t help Louisiana post-Katrina because he will be less effective.”
Cheron Brylski, a political consultant, said she was saddened by the indictment because Mr. Jefferson could have “really helped this district.”
Ms. Brylski was a campaign consultant for State Representative Karen Carter, who lost to Mr. Jefferson in the Congressional race.
“I do feel relief that this is finally moving forward,” she said. “He has to answer for the indictment. He has never given us the ‘honorable’ explanation he promised us.”
The indictment, returned by a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., charged Mr. Jefferson with 16 counts of bribery, racketeering and other crimes for demanding payment for helping telecommunications, oil, sugar and other companies seeking to do business in Africa. Since the investigation surfaced in August 2005, Mr. Jefferson had maintained his innocence and said he could explain his actions.
Since the mid-1990s, Mr. Jefferson had been a leading advocate of increased trade with Africa, and he had often boasted of his efforts to nurture black entrepreneurs. But officials at iGate, a Kentucky-based technology firm mentioned in the indictment, have complained that the congressman also tried to seize control of their company.
The indictment was another blow to Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans, who had endorsed Mr. Jefferson’s re-election, and potentially one to the city’s political power structure. Mr. Jefferson had built a substantial political machine, with family members and friends holding several offices.
Several voters said they felt sorry for Mr. Jefferson’s family. His wife, Andrea, and his eldest daughter were named in the indictment as having taken payments from businessmen involved in the case; neither was charged with a crime.
Still, Ashia Toure, 27, a marketing representative, said that for the congressman, “I think the honorable thing would be to stand down.”
“We have enough bad things going on in the state,” Mr. Toure said. “We don’t want to have people focusing on negative things like this.” |
